First Post: I send this booklet to anyone that'll read it. I read it in one of my classes. It's a guidebook about how to formatively assess writing. It's all research-based, and it's brilliant. http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/InformingWriting.pdf
Read it, reread it, put it up on your refrigerator.
Also, in my English class right now we're reading an entire book during class because students aren't reading out of class, and there are limited books and resources. Because we're reading for so many days straight, I'm always trying to come up with ways to vary my formative assessment to make sure that the students are getting what is going on in the book without becoming monotonous. One of my more successful formative assessments was to have students summarize a huge conversation in a chapter into an 8-cell comic strip. I have an example that I'll post as soon as possible, but it's something that I highly recommend. Students take at least 20 minutes or so to complete it, but it's well worth it.
Second Post: I spent a day reviewing figurative language with students by having them rotate in groups to different stations and completing six different activities with each station corresponding to a different figurative language type. The groups were on a very limited timeframe, so instead of grading for completion, I graded them on whether they provided evidence that they could fulfill the learning goals for the day. If the end-goal is student learning, not just assignment completion, I highly recommend this. (Here's the rubric I used:
http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/InformingWriting.pdf
Read it, reread it, put it up on your refrigerator.
Also, in my English class right now we're reading an entire book during class because students aren't reading out of class, and there are limited books and resources. Because we're reading for so many days straight, I'm always trying to come up with ways to vary my formative assessment to make sure that the students are getting what is going on in the book without becoming monotonous. One of my more successful formative assessments was to have students summarize a huge conversation in a chapter into an 8-cell comic strip. I have an example that I'll post as soon as possible, but it's something that I highly recommend. Students take at least 20 minutes or so to complete it, but it's well worth it.
Second Post: I spent a day reviewing figurative language with students by having them rotate in groups to different stations and completing six different activities with each station corresponding to a different figurative language type. The groups were on a very limited timeframe, so instead of grading for completion, I graded them on whether they provided evidence that they could fulfill the learning goals for the day. If the end-goal is student learning, not just assignment completion, I highly recommend this. (Here's the rubric I used: